When God Protected Mr. Magoo: Listen To Wisdom - 1 Samuel 25:32-35 Series

Introduction – God’s protection from sin is the main point

Main focus – God’s protection

There was a question that came up last week after the sermon. Someone came to me and said, “Darrell, usually you strive to always point us to the glory of God in every sermon. But in this sermon you just talked about how to deal with fools and how to deal with an angry man. It was useful information, but it was not really very God-centered.”

That critique of last week’s sermon is exactly right. And not only did the sermon not point to the glory of God, but it did not address the main point of the chapter. The reason for that is in the first half of my sermon I started with a few minor points from the passage, and then in the second half I was going to hit the major points, which were also the parts that point us to the glory of God. But the first half ended up taking up the whole time and I never got to the second half.

The reason I tell you all that is threefold. First, for those of you who are called to be Bible teachers, I do not want you to take last week’s sermon as a model. God made the main point the main point because He wanted it to be the main point. So always strive to point to God’s glory, and do not make secondary points the main point of your message.

The second reason I mention it is to make sure everyone realizes the value of you pointing it out to me when you notice problems in a sermon or in anything else I do as pastor. You are not going to hurt my feelings, and you may very well prevent the whole church from being misled on some point or another. Preaching is such a serious business that we cannot afford to let problems go unaddressed simply because someone is worried about not offending me.

And the third reason I am taking time to mention this is because I do not want there to be any confusion on what the main point of this chapter is. Last week’s sermon is still important, because we need to know how to respond to fools and angry people; but we also need to understand the main point of this chapter which is much bigger. The heart and soul of 1 Samuel 25 is in 32 – and also in 26 and 31. If you really want to understand the main message of 1 Samuel 25, underline verses 26, 31, and 32 and you will have it.

32 David said to Abigail, "Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. 33 May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands.

The main point is that God protected David from sin.

Batman or Mr. Magoo? (God has been protecting David)

David is a great hero. He is smart, he is good looking, he is resourceful, he is skilled, and he is really, really tough. If you had to compare David to a movie character, who would you pick? Maybe Batman? Or Jason Bourne? Or Aragon in the Lord of the Rings? You could probably make a case for each of those. But in the past several chapters you know which character comes to my mind? Mr. Magoo. For those of you who were not watching cartoons 35 years ago, Mr. Magoo was a cartoon character who was so nearsighted that he was basically blind and he used to walk all around town and would just miss one death trap after another by sheer providence. He would think he was just walking down the sidewalk and in reality he would be on some steel girder 100 feet off the ground, and just when he would step off something would just happen to pass under his feet and he would just keep walking without knowing anything happened. And those kinds of things would just keep happening until he arrived home safely.

The reason I compare David to Mr. Magoo is not because David was ignorant of the threats around him – he wasn’t. I draw the comparison because in most cases David was protected from those threats not by any skill or strength of his own, but through acts of providence. When you watch Mr. Magoo it is obvious that the writers are protecting him. And when you read 1 Samuel 18-25 it is obvious that God is protecting David. God makes Saul’s spear miss, God provides David with food and a sword, God enables him to escape from the Philistine king, God tells him about Saul’s movements ahead of time, and when David is completely cornered and hemmed in, God sends the Philistines to attack so Saul has to pull away. God protected David in Moab, Keilah, Maon, Engedi, in the Crags, at the Sheep Gate. He protected him from the Philistine, from Saul, from the Ziphites, from the Moabites, and now God protects David from the greatest threat of all. God sends this woman to protect David from the most deadly of all his enemies. This enemy could inflict infinitely more harm on David than all of the rest of David’s enemies put together. This enemy is… sin.